In Speculative Fiction, computers can speak. It certainly beats having the audience read a computer screen. Most of the time the voice is female (theories on why vary, see below) to emphasize the "otherness" of the A.I.'s nature, but there are many examples of male and gender neutral synthesized voices. Generally, they all carry a pleasant (if somewhat dull) monotone. If it should ever become (or started out with) a Creepy Monotone, watch out.

It's a bit deeper than a simple case of Most Writers Are Male. Culturally, unfamiliar female voices are taken as less threatening than male ones, particularly low-pitched male ones. That's why male voices in interface systems tend to be higher-pitched rather than in the James Earl Jones registers. They aren't as off-putting.

The tendency toward female voices may stem from Real Life: Companies initially hired teenage boys as telephone operators, but by 1900 the vast majority of them were female. Not only were the voices soothing, but the women tended not to be, well, hormonal balls of rage. It is also possible that the ability to pay women less than men was another added benefit.

Also worth mentioning: the naval tradition of giving ships feminine names, as well as giving abstract ideas a female Anthropomorphic Personification (Reason, Liberty, Justice, Rumor, the goddess of wisdom, etc.) is very, very old. Stands to reason it would extend to giving spaceships female names, and since the computer is the "brain" of the ship...

In The Andromeda Strain, the computer in the secret underground base plays pre-recorded messages spoken by a... pleasant female voice. A minor subversion: The voice actually belongs to a 60-year-old woman.

In Spaceballs - calmly announces the Self Destruct Sequence in the Megamaid/Spaceball 01 craft. A little slow to remind of a cancellation button and teases over the number seven. Remains polite to the very end, wishing people to "have a nice day" before exploding.

Averted with Dora, Lazarus Long's shipboard computer in both of the above works. She has a young girl's voice.

There's a subversion of sorts in Roger Zelazny's Creatures of Light and Darkness where the computer is actually wired to a woman's brain - and it'll only give him the information he wants if he has sex with her (and can manage to keep her satisfied while he's asking all of his questions).

Averted in one of Anne McCaffrey's Acorna books. A male character who spends long stretches of time with no one but his cat and his ship's computer changed its voice from the default female, because apparently hearing a female voice made him stop at whorehouses too often.

In Andrey Livadny's The History of the Galaxy series, the voice of the serv-machine AIs is feminine, by default, for male pilots and masculine for females. In fact, thanks to the pilots associating voice with gender, the AIs themselves, thanks to the neural links, begin to take on more sexualized characteristics in their personalities. A number of novels revolve around radical cases when an AI would somehow end up in a human body (through a brain implant) and become the pilot's romantic partner.

The Star Trek: New Frontier books gave a shoutout to the original Enterprise computer voice when Morgan Primus, who was also Number One in the pilot (played by Majel Barret) is destroyed and transports her mind into the ship's computers, only marginally changing the voice.

He wanted to use Sarah Michelle Gellar's voice, but she didn't return his calls.

Then there's FRED, the prototype military AI which Fargo used as SARAH's core, who gets reactivated in one episode and attempts to kill humans (actually kills a pizza delivery guy). Naturally, FRED has a deep male, unemotional voice.

Ziggy from Quantum Leap has a female voice in the one episode set back in 1999. This despite being referred to as male for the ENTIRE FIVE SEASONS of the show.

Throughout the Star Trek franchise, the computer was, with a rare exception, voiced by Gene Rodenberry's wife Majel Barrett. One episode in TNG absolutely had to have Lwaxana Troi (also played by Majel) get mad at the computer. In the season 1 episode "11001001" we had a male voice for arming the auto destruct and evacuation of the ship.

Both Whitfield's The Making of Star Trek and David Gerrold's World of Star Trek books cited the fact that military and civilian pilots (like Gene) reported finding female voices easier to hear and this was why the female voices became standard (and thus why the Enterprise used one).

In the first Mirror Universe episode, there's an interesting reaction shot when Kirk and McCoy discover that ISS Enterprise has a male computer voice. They're not precisely startled, but they pause for a moment to glance at each other.

Averted with the Cardassians and Romulans. This is in fact used in an episode of Star Trek: Voyager (titled "Dreadnought") when a Federation computer fights to take over a Cardassian system. A male and female voice stating what they're trying to in counterpoint was actually an interesting dramatic device. However the Cardassian space station Terok Nor later to be known as Starbase Deep Space Nine used a female voice. Deep Space Nine's voiceover was a different actress, Judi Durand, and the voice is lower and a bit less friendly, befitting the Cardassians. (All Federation computers in the Deep Space Nine series are still Barrett, though.)

The missile computer's voice is actually B'Elanna's, as when she reprogrammed it as a Maquis, she was sick of the unemotional masculine voice.

In "Tomorrow is Yesterday", there's some comic relief involving the Enterprise computer becoming flirty, due to having been repaired by female engineers who thought it needed a personality.

In Babylon 5, the all-purpose computers in people's quarters have a female voice. Although when Garibaldi reboots the station's main computer as a security measure, he restores a forgotten feature - a very snarky personality called "Sparky" with a male voice (provided by Harlan Ellison, who worked on the series as a consultant). Garibaldi hates it, and spends most of his time in that episode trying to get rid of it, but it's the snark and not the gender of the voice that he finds grinding.

The future computer in seaQuest DSV has a feminine voice. An escaped AI-piloted attack sub has a masculine voice, but only because it was programmed with Bridger's personality.

In one episode of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Wayne turns his home into a smart house with a pleasant female voice with the primary directive of protecting the family. His wife takes a disliking to the computer (and the voice) and, after the house, naturally, goes crazy, demands that the voice be changed. She suggests George Clooney's voice, prompting Wayne to protest that she would never leave the house.

In Helix, Research, Inc. Arctic Biosystems has a neutral, not unpleasant female voice that makes periodic announcements and status alerts, including when Patient Zero breaks out of isolation, and also announces the Previously On segment.

Pinball

The supercomputer in Bally's Xenon speaks with the synthesized voice of musician Suzanne Ciani.

Spoofed in a sketch from That Mitchell And Webb Sound where a voice actress is recording safety announcements for meltdown in a nuclear power station, and is asked to "make it a bit sexier." After all, hers may be the last voice people ever hear.

Video Games

The Combine Overwatch voice in Half-Life 2 and the Episodes falls under this trope.

The original Half-Life has the breaking/broken PA system, and the HEV suit's voice.

The French HEV Suit's voice could be either gender.

The Fan Remake of Half-Life, Black Mesa plays with this by having the PA system use the female voice from the tram until the military takes control of it, at which point it changes mid-sentence to a very intimidating male voice.

Forerunner Monitors tend to have somewhat higher-pitched voices, even when their programming is male.

Aurora Unit 242 and the voice of Samus' gunship, both from Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. The Power Suit also has an onboard voice in Echoes and Corruption, though its lines are limited to a couple of generic phrases such as "Recording to logbook" and "Data received" (the latter when someone's trying to send you on a Fetch Quest). The Suit's voice was also added to the PAL version of Prime.

GLaDOS from Portal. In the first game she was rather monotonous, while in the second game she's a bit more expressive. As it turns out, she's more than just an A.I. though, originally being a human who's consciousness was forced into a computer.

Also the turrets. Interestingly, the defective turrets in the sequel sound like a male stand-up comedian.

System Shock, but SHODAN sounds much less calm after she goes rampant: she suffers heavy vocal distortion and frequent stutters, with her vocal pitch and rate of speech varying wildly from line to line. It's implied she's doing this on purpose, for some unknown reason.

Betty in X: Beyond the Frontier is somewhere between the two. It's strange sounding. I remember it well because as soon as you begin your ship's bag spills and you have to sit through a long description of every system that no longer functions.

In following games of the X-Universe series, it has a more natural-souding monotone female voice. X Rebirth tones down the monotonous nature of Betty's voice.

StarCraft. The adjutant is more cyborg than computer, but still a she and responsible for a lot of basic stuff like that.

As far as actual gameplay goes though (in other words, ignoring the single line of dialogue in the first Terran campaign where the adjutant actually acts as a computer), the Executor and the Zerg Overmind, both undoubtedly male, serve the same purpose.

The 'Mech systems in MechWarrior 2 and MechWarrior 3; note that from MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries onwards, the voice changed, sounding a lot less computer-y and more like a recording of a talking human. MechWarrior Living Legends reverts back to a highly artificial voice, complete with Mad Libs Dialogue.

The Ghost Bear's Legacy expansion pack for MechWarrior 2 had a male voice saying the same things the female voice would say in the main title. It was a very efficient reminder of why female voices are usually preferred.

Descent and Descent II both, calmly announcing "Self Destruct Sequence... activated", as well as the final countdown. It also calls you a "cheater!"

In a departure from the other games (well technically, previous two games), you have a female-voiced AI helpfully exclaiming terms such as "Engage", "Pull Up", and "Bullseye". The game? Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere.

In a bit of humorous lampshading, the M.A.R.Go.T (Metro Authority Rapid Governmental Transit System) from Fallout 3 is voiced as a female. The engineer responsible was forced to reprogram everything just to give it a female voice.

The voice can be more frequently heard from Robobrain units roaming the Capital Wasteland. They will not hesitate to cheerfully announce their murderous intent while some will moan about their inability to do anything but attack you. At least one character in-game has expressed a Perverse Sexual Lust for these units (and properly spent some time recuperating from the ill effects he gotten from one of its attacks).

In Borderlands 2, Hyperion computers (especially the New-U Stations) all speak with the same calm, pleasant female voice. Lampshaded by Claptrap when he fails to unlock a security door and the voice tells him Hyperion troops are on their way

I'm sorry! I'm sorry, pretty female voice!

In "Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep", where everything is written by Tina, a New-U Station computer might actually complain about having to speak in that pleasant tone all the time.

Subverted by all of the talking guns. One used to be a combat robot, and has an unnaturally deep male voice. Another was designed to make you feel like garbage, so it has a harsh female voice that's always criticizing you. The third is a supposedly cursed weapon with a shrill female voice that never stops shrieking and drove all of its previous users insane.

In the first game of the Outpost franchise, the computer/AI that assists you has a female, somewhat robotic voice. Her default name?. Aphrodite.

In Codename: Kids Next Door, The computer for Sector V talks in a female voice from time to time.'She' is also shown to have emotions worthy of a woman, as seen in one episode where she is in love with numbuh 1, and jealous of Lizzie for being his girlfriend. It also seems that all K.N.D. tree houses have the same female computer voice, shown in the episode "i.t.", where the computer announces how much time is left in the game of 'tag' over the world.

Most talking calculators, clocks and watches used by the blind feature a female voice.

On military aircraft, there is a voice reminder system affectionately referred to as "Bitchin' Betty." This is the voice that gives you helpful tips such as "Pull...up. Pull...up." when you're so close to blacking out that you can't see straight and you are about to turn $40M of military hardware into a very large lawn dart. It turns out that the military did research on the voice, and found that pilots respond more quickly to female voices. The same study noted that pilots respond even more quickly to strongly worded commands, but nobody wanted to explain why they spent $10M teaching airplanes to shout "Pull the * BLEEP* up!" It was also found that higher voices were more easily heard when there was other noise going on.

Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert), believes that most of these devices are programmed by geeky men, who want something that sounds like a beautiful woman and asks to be touched in precise ways.

Bitching Betty also lives on civilian aircraft, helpfully warning you of everything from approaching terrain to stall conditions.

Apple computers have voice synthesizers. The default voice falls under this trope, although you have the option to switch to older female, 30-something male, boy and girl, and even a robot- or alien-like voice.

The Dec Talk speech synthesizer features "Beautiful Betty", "Rough Rita" and "Whispering Wendy" in its collection of selectable voices.

The "Echo" speech synthesizer (mainly for use with the Aple 2E) did release a female version.

GPS systems, particularly those designed for cars, often have young female voices. (Ostensibly these are supposed to sound the most soothing, a useful trait when you've just missed your turn for the fifth time and you're in a maze of one-way streets). Some devices allow you to change the default voice between male and female options.

Discussed in Date Night when Phil Foster ignores the GPS's advice in favor of a "short cut". Claire asserts that, "It's because it's a woman's voice. If that thing had John Madden's voice, you would listen to it."

Automotive voice command systems in general, including but not limited to GM's OnStar and Ford's Sync.

A notable aversion comes from Mercedes-Benz, whose COMAND system has a female voice with a very harsh, low-toned quality. Between the less-than-pleasant voice and the complete lack of politeness "fluff speech," owners occasionally refer to COMAND as "The Grumpy German."

On Top Gear when Richard Hammond tested the Aston Martin V8 Vantage Roadster (which he points out is from the Ford era) he lamented, "Why when they programmed the SatNav and recorded the voice commands did they hire the warden from a women's prison? Said voice sounds like a robotic version of Anne Robinson.

The SkyTrain rapid transit system in Vancouver, British Columbia, uses a pleasant female voice to announce arrival at each station. TransLink has recently introduced a similar feature on some buses. The SeaBus between downtown Vancouver and the North Shore uses an upbeat male voice to announce the mandatory safety features.

The Washington, D.C. Metrorail system held a contest, and a local woman gives all of the recorded announcements the train makes. These include Please stand clear of the closing doors and When boarding, please allow customers to exit before boarding the train. The announcement of stops is made by the train operator, whether it's a man or a woman.

In the late 1990s, the London Underground was considering using the voice of Marilyn Monroe for its announcements. A news article commented that instead of a Streetcar Named Desire, they'd have a Subway That Sounds Like Sex.

The Minneapolis Light Rail has all of its announcements done by a female voice. It's rather businesslike, more so than some other examples here.

Microsoft has released a counter to Apple's Siri called Cortana. Naturally, Cortana is voiced by Jen Taylor. Most commercials tend to pit Cortana vs. Siri and inevitably end with Siri appearing as inferior. Cortana also sounds less machine-like than Siri.

Masculine Voice Examples

Originally HAL was meant to be female, but it was changed in the last minute.

Another aversion, or maybe this one is a subversion: The refurbished Enterprise's computer voice in the Star Trek movies is male.

Another Alien example: In Alien: Resurrection, the voice of the computer on the military vessel USM Auriga was male, and named Father, in contrast to MU-TH-R from the first film.

JARVIS, from the Iron Man movie. (Actually named for the Avengers' butler in the comicverse. Speculation abounds.) There is now an official JARVIS app, providing the snarky voice of Paul Bettany for everyone to enjoy. It allows limited voice control.

Receives a Lampshade Hanging in the novelization of Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom: While the computers on Confederation and Border Worlder ships use a soothing female voice (because the pilots like it better), Black Lance ships instead have a stern male voice for their computers.

Webmind in the WWW Trilogy has a variety of male voices. Initially he used the sort of synthesised voices you get with text-to-speech programs and at one point he is described as sounding like a GPS. Later on he settles on immitating a male voice actor in an effort to be more human-friendly.

The toaster owned by the family of the main character and the artificial intelligence running Dr. X's laboratory in the book literature/Popular Clone are all male.

Live-Action TV

UFO. 'SID' [Satellite Intruder Detector] averted the usual trope by speaking in a deep, plummy male voice. A deleted scene even has 'him' singing "Home On The Range" as he floats through space.

Eddie, the ship's computer of the starship Heart of Gold, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. (Although it's mentioned, and briefly demonstrated, that he has an alternative personality with a female voice and mannerisms.)

Tabletop Games

Friend Computer in the RPG Paranoia. How human it actually sounds is of course up to the gamemaster, but some flavor of Dissonant Serenity is often present.

Video Games

The computer voice in Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri is male. "Please don't go. The Drones need you. They look up to you!" although one of the several Datalink-readers is female.

In Fallout, the Master had three voices, and used them to accentuate the point he wanted to make. He had his normal "exposition" voice, an "angry" male voice, and a soft, almost joyous female voice that he used whenever he said something he wanted you to like, or when he was on the defensive, such as:

The Master: "I am no villain..."

An example of how the voices are used: One Master line is, "Join us or die. Join.Die!Join.Die!" The normal text is "Exposition Master", the italics are "Female Master", and the bold is "Angry Master".

Crysis' Nanosuit has a male voice as default, but allows you to switch to a female one in the options menu. The sequel has a male-only voice, which sounds much more robotic than in the previous game.

Fallout 3 has Mister Gutsies and Sentry Bots as masculine voice-emitting bots. Mister Gutsies (and one companion you can have) will often shout pro-American, anti-Chinese lines (since it is built originally for war against Chinese invasion) with amusing results. The Sentry Bot on the other hand, sounds very cold and machinelike, for good reasons too...

Securitrons in Fallout: New Vegas also has rather cold male voice, though not as much as Sentry Bots since they seemingly able to express sarcasm and excitement to some extent.

The on-board computer ANGUS in Millennia Altered Destinies has a masculine voice and always sounds calm and soothing, even in critical situations. This helps, since you only really ever hear him talk, even when communicating with representatives of four alien species. Their grunts and squeaks are translated by ANGUS in his own voice.

In Portal 2 Wheatley (And the other personality spheres) are male, as is the "Backup" AI that guides you through the first test chambers & later announces general facility information & procedures. This backup appears separate from the main facilty AI as they can converse, but much more limited in its interractions.

All three time zones and the present time in the first The Journeyman Project game have male computer voices in the Pegasus Prime remake, compared to the largely female voices in Turbo. Course, the time zones in question (save for one in 200 million BC) are all future history periods.

There's even a male computer voice in the World Science Center in 2310 that has an Australian accent, and the Turbo version has an Asian actress for the Japanese Mars Colony in 2185. The three evil robots in these time zones don't count.

On top of that, Gage Blackwood's apartment in Pegasus Prime has a British-accented computer of its own that runs the devices there, and the TSA gave him a female AI on a Biochip that acts as the text window in Turbo. Makes you wonder how Mr. Blackwood feels with all these voices, huh?

In the second and third games, your AI Arthur has a friendly but a little snarky voice.

Still in X-Universe: Contrasting with the ships' autopilot, the stations' "Automated Interaction System" is a male voice. Like with the autopilot, it was heavilly filtered in the first game, but it was made more natural in later ones. However, the announces are still voiced by a female.

Also, the welcome message becomes more formal the more the player reputation with the owner race is high.

Curiously, Pirate stations' voices are not very monotone, and not formal at all.

The Emperor's "voice actor" in If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device is apparently an actual text-to-speech device - in fact, the Emperor getting a TTS is the entire premise of the show. He sounds like regular text-to-speech devices with masculine, non-emotive voice. Amusingly, he still tries to get the occasional Big Word Shout through it, even though every time it's clear it's not going to work. * As in, "FUUUUUUUUUCK" comes out as "Fiuiuiuiuahck", which has considerably less weight as a curse word.

In a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror, the family gets a computerized house, and they of course are freaked out by the default HAL voice, so they take their choice of Matthew Perry, Dennis Miller and Pierce Brosnan.

Parodied on Invader Zim: Zim's Computer (the AI system for his entire base) often seems to have more common sense than its master, outright telling Zim that his plans will fail, but is never heeded. At other times it becomes whiny when Zim orders it around, or will even refuse to work at all, complaining that Zim doesn't pay him. It's the electronically distorted voice of Johnen Vasquez

Zim: Why is my computer coughing?

The American Darkstalkers cartoon had Pyron's Computer. A snarky, sarcastic and cynical, talking, glowing and floating metal orb, that rarely does anything besides commenting on his superiors' stupidity.

Real Life

Assistive Products

Blazie Engineering produced a line of notetakers that used the Artic speech chip.

Also the case with Fritz 9, a Chess program designed by Chess Base, -at least in this one, don't know if it has also been implemented in the following versions (I have a newer version (12), but never actually checked the voice system). The program's voice will be a male sarcastic one that will not hesitate to tell you (bad) chess jokes.

Microsoft has released a few male computer voices. Microsoft Mike as part of their SAPI 4 and 5 software, Sam as part of Windows XP and David as part of Windows 8, 8.1 and 10.

Public buses in Madrid, Spainnote Subway and commuter trains use for that recorded voices use to announce next stops a male voice from the Loquendo program.

Neuter/Other

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Films

Both male and female voices are heard in Runaway. Louis the Robot Maid speaks with a female voice, while a male voice is used for the building computer at a robot research centre, and there's a brief discussion among the protagonists about the high quality of its voice synthesizer.

The Billion Dollar Brain (1967) speaks down telephone lines to the protagonists in the Machine Monotone expected of the era.

Live Action TV

Holly from Red Dwarf started out as male (with no comment on his gender) but later performed a "computer sex-change" on himself (a Hand Wave to explain Norman Lovett's replacement with Hattie Hayridge, although Lovett would return to the role at the end of Series VII.)

Solitary is a Reality Show "hosted" by a sentient AI named VAL. In the first season, VAL's voice was androgynous, but from the second season onward, it was clearly female.

The VI interfaces in Mass Effect are certainly related: they are holograms that serve as interfaces to allow you to interact with computer systems. The ones in the citadel are Asari (monogendered female-like species). Later both male and female human variations are seen, and even a Prothean one, though due to 50,000 years of wear and tear, that one looks like a irregular sphere rather than resembling an actual Prothean. Then we meet a VI who looks like an actual Prothean in Mass Effect 3.

The AI Adam isn't voiced, but in the final confrontation between it and Samus, its "text noise" is noticeably lower-pitched than hers.

There's also the computer that operates mines in the Descent game: "Self-destruction sequence - activated".

Halo 3: ODST's Superintendent has a unique variation of this: "he" speaks in a somewhat high-pitched, gender-neutral voice, but in fact only can speak in pre-recorded messages. When trying to prevent a squad of Marines from blowing up a bridge, he urges them to "please respect public property." When he changes his mind, he says "Bridge toll accepted. Have a pleasant trip." In the audio-file side story, he's shown to play certain other sounds - for example, a cane tapping and a seeing-eye dog barking, meaning he can't see what's going on.

Another Fallout 3 example, Protectrons, who are the lowest-rung bots have a neutral, robotic-y voice. Sometimes it's humorous, sometimes it's just annoying.

Ikaruga is more likely to fall into this category, it is rather hard to judge whether if the ship's AI is male or female. Then again, this is probably because of the first player is male, while second player is female, and that both ships feature the same AI voice although being two completely different ships.

Starting with the PS2 games, Armored Core featured the option of changing your AC's computer voice, which the player only ever really heard at the beginning and end of missions. In Armored Core 2 and later games, this was achieved by installing another head (which would cause the player to shell out a few creds just to get rid of the "neuter" voice of the default head unit). In other games, this was changed to an option in the garage menu. In the original Armored Core, the head unit also changed the computer's voice, although one had to experiment to find the different voices; in ''AC2'', this function appeared in the specs.

Notifications in the first person six-degrees-of-freedom shooter NeonXSZ are read aloud word-by-word by a monotone, gender-ambiguous computer voice.

Machines has a female voice for mission briefings and announcements, but the machines themselves sound male.

Starsiege has the creepy Cybrid battle computer. You might call it 'male' if only because it's deeper than the obviously female voice for the humans' computer voice, but it has a rough, inhumanly mechanical undertone in each syllable. Quite fitting for a race of homicidal rogue artificial intelligences.

In Star Citizen, each of the starship manufacturers installs their own Bitching Betty system that calls out warnings to the pilot.

Male Betty users include Aegis Dynamics (a defense contractor) and Roberts Space Industries' cheaper offerings. Aegis uses a stern, human-like voice while cheap RSI ships use a very synthetic voice, to the point where it can be difficult to understand

A GPS producer in Germany tried to sell a GPS with a female voice. It didn't sell very well. Turned out the majority of drivers were male who didn't like taking orders from women, so the voice was changed to male.

Actually, almost every GPS sold in Germany used and still uses a female voice as the default. The simple reason was that for a long time, the male German voices were not only really hard to understand, but also sounded rather creepy as the loud speakers of the GPS's were quite small and cheap, which killed all bass from the deeper male voices. Your brain knew it was supposed to be a male voice, but your ears said bloody hell no.

The text to speech device that Stephen Hawking uses to communicate sounds nominally male, though it is also clear that it is artificial.

female voice but slightly lower.

The Acapela Group has created many male computer voices that are used in screen reading technology for the blind.

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